Lightroom is a very popular tool for photographers to both manage and edit their photo libraries. It is a powerful RAW editor, but many users have found that with each update, Lightroom seems to get slower. We have recently seen a couple of resources that will help users speed up their Lightroom workflow.

First up is a video from photographer Anthony Morganti. Morganti gives seven tips for optimizing Lightroom’s performance. The first thing he talks about is Lightroom’s previews. Particularly in the Develop module, you might find that Lightroom spends a lot of time loading images when you flip between photos. This is because Lightroom is creating a preview for you to see the image. During import, you can adjust how Lightroom builds previews. Lightroom will run quicker if you have it build 1:1 previews during import. This takes a lot of disk space and takes a long time initially, but will improve performance when you’re processing your files. But if you’re worried about disk space, you can import images as 1:1 and then when you’re done processing a folder, you can set Lightroom to automatically discard 1:1 previews to different time frames, such as after one day or one week. You should also optimize your standard preview size such that it matches the width of your monitor.

For more tips and tricks, such as how to set up your performance settings in Lightroom, watch the video below. (Via Canon Watch)

Another article we found this week is from Kishore Sawh at SLR Lounge, “Lightroom Better & Faster.” This tutorial is more focused on improving your own speed when using Lightroom by speeding up your workflow. A great, quick way to view before and after comparisons in Lightroom is by pressing Y, Shift + Y and Alt + Y. Pressing Y shows a split screen view of before and after comparisons.

Another tip is holding down your Alt or Option key when using the tone curve in Lightroom to make your mouse movements much more precise. By holding down this key, your cursor is slowed down and you can make fine-tuned adjustments to the curve. To see more tips and tricks, see the full article here.